Jonah Hex
(2010) + The Mentalist – The Complete
Second Season (2009 - 2010/Warner DVDs)
Picture:
C+ Sound: B- Extras: C/C- Feature: C-/Episodes: C
Stories
about people with some sixth or seventh ability, whether it is the ability to
read the living and/or contact the dead.
However, the recent feature film of the DC Comics character Jonah Hex (2010) had a choice of using
the ability for the title character to contact the dead or not. That was a recent addition in the comic book
history of the character, so the Neveldine/Taylor team had a choice to include
it in the script and they did. Once
again, they botched a franchise.
In what
plays like a discarded script for the Wild,
Wild West movie (which itself really did use a discarded script from the
Tim Burton/Nicolas Cage Superman film that never happened), Hex has to take on
a cartoonish villain (John Malkovich getting an easy paycheck hamming it up),
Megan Fox plays “the girl” and Warner watched the film go over-budget from
reshoots, second guesses and even Josh Brolin (who can act) could not save the
film as the title character. Instead, it
follows a constricted formula that makes it feel more like Catwoman than Dark Knight,
the latter model of which it should have followed. Maybe they hoped it would be another Ghost Rider, but that did not happen
and if this had been made like a dark Western and Hex had no special powers,
the film could have delivered.
Director
Jimmy Hayward seems to have tried to make this work, but ultimately, it disappoints
and just does not stay with you. We have
seen worse and supporting actors like Michael Shannon and Michael Fassbinder
are ideal for this project, but too many things that could have gone wrong do.
In the
meantime, The Mentalist goes on as a
moderate hit TV show. If you are not
familiar with the show, we covered Season
One at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9024/The+Mentalist+%E2%80%93+The+Co
The Complete Second Season is more of the same and there is
no real growth here in character development as the 23 hour-long (almost) shows
become more about soap opera conflicts than taking off like the show should
have. This might be safe, but I cannot see
this causing the show to last. Simon
Baker is good here, but I expected more and got less.
The anamorphically
enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Hex and
1.78 X 1 on Mentalist are sadly on
par with each other, with both having softness, motion blur and limited
depth. Hex was shot in Super 35mm film format, but is so digitally gutted
and plastered with visual effects overkill that the money in actual sets,
locations and costumes is undermined and we doubt a Blu-ray would look much
better. Mentalist is simply the same old shaky camerawork again. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on both have
soundfields, but Hex seems to be sonically better, though limited by the old
lossy codec. Bet the Blu-ray sounds
better. Extras include Additional Scenes
on both, while Mentalist adds two
featurettes on the making of the show including its key concept.
- Nicholas Sheffo
